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Completely pooped from all of yesterday’s, well, you know. Blog post up. Link in profile. #dogs #4thofjuly #dogsofinstagram #beagleblues

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June Re-cap post up on blog. www.thenestedblog.com

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A post about #medicine, #love, and #cats. 

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Mind. Blown.

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And That’s When I Realized… Skinny Isn’t Everything and My Body Isn’t the Enemy.

And That’s When I Realized… Skinny Isn’t Everything and My Body Isn’t the Enemy.

And that's when I realized... is a series of reader submissions. It is an attempt to allow people to tell their realizations, both the comical and poignant. To submit to this series, please email me at firebunny58@gmail.com.  Today’s post is by Kristen Barner. 

  I’m “middle aged.”  I’m menopausal.  I’m arthritic.  My bones are terrible.  I’m fifteen twenty pounds heavier than I’d like to be.  But I’m not even close to cashing in my chips.  That’s what I call success.

I was a tiny little kid back when I was a little kid.  I was shorter than my peers, skinnier than my peers; I was allergic to my own mother’s milk (Sorry Mom!  It was nothing personal.); I cringed every summer at camp when the other campers wanted to pick me up because I was “so little and cute.”  The summer before I entered the fifth grade, Mom took me shopping for new school clothes.  The exchange I had with the sales woman left me furious.  It left he saleswoman, well, I didn’t really care how it left her:

MOM: We’re here to get some new school clothes for my daughter.

SALESWOMAN: Oh!  Isn’t that wonderful!  Aren’t you just the cutest thing?  I bet you are so excited to start Kindergarten!

ME: Listen Lady: I may have a size 6X body but I do NOT have a size 6X mind!!!!!

And then I huffed away and my poor Mother was embarrassed for everyone.

New school clothes came from a different store.

Then I grew up: fast and tall and fat.  It was crazy.  Blame it on thyroid and puberty, but mostly thyroid.  The whole experience was dreadful.  It was a terrible combination.  But I was smart, so I had that going for me.  Who needs a date to homecoming, anyway???? Sooooo overrated.  I had great empathy for the tiny kids and the overweight kids.  I’d been both.

College came and went.  I was a big girl, but I tried to exercise and at least stay healthy.  It still wasn’t exactly cool with the guys to be seen dating the smart, liberal, politically active, church-going hippie chick.  (One day, Kate, I’ll tell you about the time I pitched a tent on the president’s lawn.)

The first time I really started dating?  When I moved to Ghana.  I’d had chronic malaria (still do) and a variety of dysentery.  I lost a bunch of weight and apparently the new skinny blond girl was quite the catch in the ExPat community.  At least my first boyfriend in Ghana, the Italian Ambassador, thought so.

It was a rugged diet plan, and I certainly don’t recommend it.  But it sure was nice to finally get a little positive attention from people I might like to date.

This is not me with a date, though it could have/should have been.  This is my little African dog, Tiger,

love of my life.

Years passed.  Weight fluctuated.  Malaria helped, the thyroid didn’t.  A diagnosis of Celiac Disease (right before my 40th birthday!) was a total head-trip with body dysmorphia.  Long story short: I lost a ton of – too much – weight, which was nice at first (bathing suit season) and then terrifying.  There’s thin.  And then there’s prison-camp/heroine-addict-looking thin.  Nothing pretty about it. (Unless, of course, you’re some poorly misguided gazillionaire fashion model who gets paid to look like a clothes hanger.) After oodles of tests, it was discovered that I have Celiac disease and my diet was immediately altered for life. 

So was my metabolism. 

Did I mention I’m menopausal?

Nothing like those two hitting the ground, running at you, full steam ahead.

My body had been starving.  Literally.  And then it wasn’t.  My body made a promise to me, like a vow, like “til death do us part.”  What was the vow, you ask? “You will never starve again because I will never let you shed another calorie.  Ever.  All of your calories are safe with me, Kid!  Promise.”

Jiminy Mother Cricket!!!  Thanks.  Next time I’m wandering through the Sahara for weeks and weeks, I’ll be thrilled.  (Not that Iwouldn’t be wandering through the Sahara, because, you know, you never know.  I suppose my largess, in this particular circumstance, would make me feel proud and secure.)

And Lady Menopause checked in (“Me too!  Me too!”) making her own promise: “I vow to screw with your head, your hormones, your thermostat, your libido, your bones, your complexion, and your arthritis.  If your body forgets and lets you lose a calorie or two, I promise to give you the drive, craving, insatiable and unalienable self-righteous need for chocolate.  I got your back[side], Kid! Promise.  You can thank me later.”

And Mistress Thyroid?  Typical.  Threw up her hands, threw in the towel, declared, “Hell if I know what’s going on.  I’m outta here.” And off she went.  Never to be seen again.

I sit here this evening, writing this for our dear Princess Kate, wondering if any of this is useful.   I reckon a number of you readers are a decade or so younger than I am with full lives, healthy lives, bones and blood that work, and a reliable and predictable formula for chocolate-in/elliptical-out.  I suppose I am here to tell you that sometimes our internal gadgets, regulators, systems, bodies don’t always play nice like we think they should.  Sometimes bodies are screwy. 

That’s what I want to say to you: Sometimes bodies are screwy.   I’m headed into my 46th year and I have finally figured out a theology I’ve been preaching forever but never fully needed  - needed – to understand: the way in which my body does or does not work is not a judgment on the value of my worth as a child of God, a daughter, a sister, a wife, an aunt, a doggie-mama, a friend, a minister and so on.  It’s not about my value; it’s about biology. 

So I boogie board every day that I can, I commit to going to the gym 5 times a week, I pay attention to my diet (yes, I focus in on the chocolate as it goes into my mouth and I thank the hands that picked it).  My bones and muscles ache, my back is sore, I haul myself out of bed like I’m90-years-old and it takes an hour for my joints to catch up with the day.  But I keep moving because I mostly – usually – can.  More-or-less.

Yesterday was 60 minutes of boogie boarding and 45 minutes on the elliptical machine.  Today was just 30 on the elliptical but an hour in an Epsom salt bath. I was pretty sure that my bones would crumble and melt away.

And that’s when I realized that skinny isn’t everything and my body isn’t the enemy.  My body has more-or-less worked for me for 40-odd years.  I think that for the next 40 years I will count less on my body working for me and that I begin to work for my body. 

And on that note, it’s time to hit the hay.  We, my body and I, have a date with the ocean at 8:00 AM.  Join me if you wanna.  I’m hoping the waves are big enough to slalom and maybe by the end of the summer, maybe, I can learn to roll and flip!

 ---------

Rev. Kristen Barner can be seen all over the beautiful Charleston, SC area, officiating weddings.  She’s an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and has a specialized ministry, officiating weddings, through Wedding Belle Rev, LLC.  Find her atwww.CharlestonWeddingBelleRev.com, Wedding Wire, Wedding Bee, Martha Stewart Weddings, Gay Weddings.com, and like her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/WeddingBelleRev .   She’s a longtime friend of Carter Pilkington and the Pilkington Family and is proud and blessed to have “adopted” Kate into her circle of All Time Favorite People.  And, Kristen had the great honor to officiate and bless the marriage of Kate and Carter.  Epic.  With love.

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A Comprehensive How-to for Using and Loving Bloglovin'

Ok, as promised, I'm going to tell you all about Bloglovin.'

I know - I'm not even bothering with graceful introductions anymore. [Insert something about sunshine, nice weather, farewell luncheon, packing, yada, yada, yada.] 

And now, as promised yesterday (because I'm not a total filthy liar), I give you a post about Bloglovin'!

Okay. Let's talk shop. I'm assuming, first of all, that every one of you rushed to get your own Bloglovin' account after my raucous and rousing post yesterday. Here are the facts:

1. Google is doing away with Google Friend Connect and, therefore, the Google reader with which you have enjoyed your Blogger blogs up until this point. 

2. If you do not transfer the blogs you follow before this transition happens, you will lose them and have to rely on your own powers of memory to recover them, which, if you're me, is not a pony on which you want to bet. 

3. If you follow these simple instructions and transfer that followship now, nothing will be lost and you will have gained a newer, simpler, more dynamic way to read and organize your favorite blogs. 

Let's get started. First of all, sign into both your new Bloglovin' account as well as your Gmail account with which you do your blogging. I'll wait. Okay. Your Bloglovin' homepage should look something like this:

Before we go any further, I would like to talk to you about the anatomy of a Bloglovin' post:

Got it? Of course you do, you smart cookies, you. Moving on:

When you click on "Settings," you'll be taken to a page that looks like this:

Listen to my command - scroll down for The Goods:

Did you see that, kittens? This is the button that will allow you to make the grand followship transfer. Click it.

Do you see that? That's a blog post! All of the blogs you follow with Google Friend Connect are now here! Let's move on, shall we?

These are all of the blogs you follow. Yes, I follow a lot. But I can't expect bloggers to follow me if I'm not willing to follow them. Because follow-backsies are a big deal in blogland. 

But the OCD in you is screeching right now, I know. How to keep track? This is always what bothered you about Google Reader! Fear not, minions - Bloglovin' allows you to create categories and sort your blogs into them! Watch and learn!

To add blogs to categories, simply go back to the blogs you follow and repeat this step. Create all of the categories you want that make sense to you. And then you can thank the good people of Bloglovin' for finally making blog reading easy and intuitive. 

I'm going to talk to you about a few more features. Click on "Top Blogs" on the left sidebar.

It will take you to a page that looks like this:

These are all of the top blogs on Bloglovin,' which means they have the most followers. Don't be daunted by the fact that 90% of them are fashion blogs. We can all make this list. I can't stress this enough - if you write quality, engaging content, people will come. It may take them a while because they may have to stop to pee/buy a churro from a truck stop, but they'll get there. Why? Because churros are awesome. 

And so are you. 

Next, click on the drop-down from your name and select "View Profile":

You heard me - click away, kittens, to be taken to your blog's specific Bloglovin' page. This is different than your profile. Why? Bloglovin' is awesome in that it allows you to post more than one of your blogs (if you have mutliples) to the same Bloglovin' account. For example, on my Bloglovin' account, I have Nested, but I also have my pitiful little food blog. Awesome, right? Yessssss. 

Okay, so when you've clicked on your blog, you'll see this:

If you click on "Similar Blogs," you'll be directed here:

This is a neat networking feature. To follow a blog, just click "Follow." And yes, it really is as easy as that. To search for a blog to follow on Bloglovin' simply use the search bar that I showed you on the homepage. 

One final thing - you'll be needing a button with a link to your Bloglovin' account for easy access to your readers. According to AshleyRose, according to Bloglovin,' people who include a link to their Bloglovin' account at the end of every post have a higher rate of followship. It may not be aesthetically pleasing, but it works. And here's how you get one:

Yes - it IS this easy. And wonderful, no? 

I hope this was helpful to you!

And now, I have a favor to ask of you. (Don't I always?) If you want to make my birthday extra, ridiculously special, please follow me on Bloglovin.' If I get to 75 Bloglovin' followers, I'll start the nest round of the Giveaway, which is awesome because it means that I'll be giving you a present for my birthday. 

So get on Bloglovin' and play around! And then follow me! And then follow all of your friends! And enjoy an ease of reading that you've never know before! 

Happy Wednesday, y'all! 

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Be still, my beating heart!

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Skeleton remains of four people that could date back to the Roman era were unearthed during work on a new water pipeline.

Anglian Water is connecting Boston to Covenham Reservoir in a £40million project to supply the area’s growing population.

Specialists were assessing sites ahead of laying...

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So you’ve started a blog and you’re feeling pretty damn good about it.

Everyday, people come to your site to read your posts. People share them with their friends and sometimes they even leave a comment. No better feeling than that…..

One day a friend says, “You know, you should...

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I’m happier than a labradoodle with a peanut butter jar. #lolabear #everydayimdoodling

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The Lifetime Original Movie: "All She Wanted Was Some F*cking Coffee."

So I was sitting on my couch at 7:00 this morning, eating my cookie dough yogurt and watching The Golden Girls. For the record, it takes me a full episode of those gals to enable me to face my day. Sometimes, however, like this morning, I like to switch it up. So I toggled the remote over to Lifetime to watch The New Adventures of Old Christine while the Golden Girls were on commercial. I only assume it was because they needed a potty break. Clearly the actors and actresses had to pee and couldn't wait to finish the scene where Blanche finds out that her daughter is going to a sperm bank. (dun dun dun!)  Because that is how I view commercials. Because I'm well-adjusted and have a keen grasp on reality. Duh. Anyway, I saw the trailer for a Lifetime Original Movie entitled, "A Sister's Revenge." Over-dramatized. Over-acted. Over... well, pretty much everything. This might be a really unpopular post, and I'm okay with that. Mom and Kara, you can stop reading now - I don't want to hurt your feelings when I say this.... Lifetime Original Movie titles are the worst. Hush Little Baby I would say that the movies themselves are the worst, but, as I've never actually seen one, that seems unfair. But I do, however, have a Master's degree in writing and so I do, however, know that "12 Hours to Live" is a f*cking awful title for a movie. Abysmal, really. Or maybe that's just me. Personally, I refuse to watch a movie where I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I will cry for more than 50% of it.(Exceptions to this rule are: Little Women, The Dead Poets Society, Big Fish, and UP)  And I'm non-discriminating in this regard. I went to see The Notebook with my sister in theaters and it literally almost killed me. I cried for the ENTIRE last hour and a half, severely dehydrating myself, cried for another 20 minutes when we got to the car, cried all the way home, cried for an hour when we got home, fell asleep, woke up the next morning and started to tell my mom about the movie and then cried for another 2 hours. And so, I instated the rule. It's for my health, really. Which is why all Nicholas Sparks books-turned-to-movies and all Lifetime Original Movies are on my "no fly" list. Period. Why? For those of you who don't watch a lot of Lifetime (or Google incessantly ... or have a mom and sister who are addicted to LOMs), let me provide for you a list of a few of the titles. They're gems, really.

‘Til Lies Do Us Part

12 Hours to Live

30 Years to Life

A Case for Murder

A Child’s Wish

A Child’s Cry for Help

A Colder Kind of Death

A Sister’s Revenge

Chance of a Lifetime

Changing Hearts

Dirty Teacher

Half A Dozen Babies

He Loves Me

Leading with Her Heart

Lies of the Twins

The Accidental Witness

The Pregnancy Pact

Too Young to Be a Dad

What She Knew

Imagine my commentary. Just imagine it. Dirty Teacher? That shit's gold. 

Anyway, as I sat on my couch at 7 am, eating my cookie dough yogurt, I wondered what shitty title we'd give episodes of my life if someone were to write a Lifetime movie about it. Here's what I came up with:

Her Favorite Spatula Is Broken

Lies of the Cable Company

Dirty Kitchen

The Hair Fall is on the Wall

She Asked You Not to Wash That Under Regular Cycle

Spurnful Wheat

5 Hours to Sleep

The Fear of Bird Flu

Too Lazy to Put on Pants

The Milk Has Gone Bad

She Put the Milk in Her Coffee Anyway

The Food Poisoning Reckoning

What Her Husband Really Hears When She Talks

The Un-OxyClean-Able Stain

I Get the Moss Balls if We Divorce

I Told You So

How Hostile Her Uterus

It's Only Eternity, Self

At Least It Wasn't Meth

Allergic to the World

She Hates Everyone When She's Driving

Too Cold to "Snuggle"

Okay. I wouldn't even watch those. 

Clearly I need to involve myself in more pregnancy pacts. 

Although, being married means that I could get knocked up now and it would be acceptable to LITERALLY every single person and faith tradition on the planet. So no scandal there. Boo. 

(Note: I came to that realization during a bit of a pregnancy scare. Okay, fine. It wasn't really a scare. It was more of a "holy shit, holy shit, I'm so effing neurotic and if we're pregnant I will LITERALLY cry for 12 hours straight because we're broke but then start pinning all the nursery mural things" kind of moment. I may have also had the "oh my God, my Dad is going to KILL me" moment. And then I had the realization: "Shit. I'm 25. I'm married. This means that I could get preggo yesterday and everyone would be all 'That's so exciting! Congratulations!'" And while this is awesome, the "bad girl" in me bemoans it a little. That was always the ace in my back pocket. I could always yell, "I may be horrible, mom and dad, but at least I'm not pregnant!" Now if I ever yelled that at anyone they'd be all, "Don't worry, sweetheart. Your time will come. It's ok that you can't get pregnant and are lashing out at everyone trying to make it seem like that's the way you want it." I mean, really.) 

(Addendum to Note: This is primarily for my sister, but I realized that if you were really reading into it *cough* Kara *cough* that that last note might make it seem like I want to have a baby right now. Let's clarify this - I don't. I am perfectly happy with my dogs and moss balls at the moment and there is a resounding echo in my hollow uterus. Just the way I like it. And believe me, you're not ready to read this lady's blog when there's a baby all up in hurr. You are not at all ready. Because I will be graphic. So help me, I will. But then again, I think you all knew that. So stay tuned and in 3-7 years, all of your wildest dreams may come true.) 

So it looks like my Lifetime Original Movie-worthy scandal days are over. Le sigh.

I'm sure that some people think that some of what I write on this blog might be a little bit scandalous. I did once compare my lady parts to Lord of the Rings in fairly specific detail. And I'm not afraid to type or say the word vagina in public. Which is sometimes awkward, like when I'm kind of singing it like Oprah ("Vaginaaaaaaaaaaa") and someone walks up. For the record, I never just sing that word. There is always context. Unfortunately, the interloper never knows what that context is and so, to them, I'm the crazy gal without shame or boundaries. ...which isn't entirely untrue. Like the time I said "whore" in a live broadcast accidentally. But at least I didn't do what I normally do when I accidentally cuss in inappropriate situations, which is to cuss again. Like I did at my wedding. In a church. When I signed the marriage license on the wrong line and this stream happened:

ME: Okay, so I sign here...

CARTER: No! You sign there!

ME: F*ck. ...Shit! ...F*ck! ...Shit!

CARTER: You need someone to stop you, don't you?

ME: Please tell me I'm not going to hell. 

CARTER: Shhhhhh. Shhhh. It's okay. You're not going to hell for this. 

ME: Thanks, babe. 

CARTER: After all, you've done far worse than accidentally say f*ck in a church. 

Hey, at least it's not meth, right? 

Happy Hump Day, y'all! 

_________________________________________________________________________________

Ok, because I love you all so much, I'm going to gift you with the secret of Cookie Dough Yogurt: 

1 6 oz container of plain, nonfat Greek yogurt

1 teaspoon of peanut butter

1 splash of vanilla extract (to taste)

31 dark chocolate chips (and yes, it's that precise. Because I'm anal and maybe have OCD)

1 packet of stevia (or to taste) 

Voila! And here's how I justify it:

1. Yogurt is good for your vah-jay-jay. 

2. Dark chocolate prevents strokes. 

3. Peanut Butter has protein and is good for the soul. 

4. Nutritionists say that if you're going to eat dessert, eat it for breakfast because then you have the whole day to "burn it off." 

5. I can't have real cookie dough because of my f*cking gluten allergy, so if I want cookie dough yogurt for breakfast, who's going to try to stop me? (Really, you shouldn't try. I might maul you like a polar bear.) 

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I’m going to give you the secret of Twitter, my friends. Are you ready for it? Are you sure you can handle it? Ok. The secret to Twittering well is that you have to be convinced that everyone cares about the tiniest minutiae of your life – and I mean be truly convinced. Or, you can tweet like a boss and be convinced of that in a really lazy, tongue-in-cheek sort of way. Which is what I do.

My post was syndicated on BlogHer!

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"The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast." - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

I woke up at 6 this morning to both my alarm and Carter reading me the news that an MIT Campus Police Officer, 26-year-old Sean Collier, had been shot and killed, that one of the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects had been killed, and that a perimeter had been set up to try to sieve out the second suspect. The city of Boston is on lock-down. I have friends and mentors who live in Boston. I have friends and mentors who live in Texas, too - since I don't want to disregard that tragedy. 

This has been a rough week, a bittersweet week, a week that began with both a bombing and excellent news about my father's cancer prognosis and that ended with the news that another of my posts was being syndicated but also that a massive explosion has claimed dozens of lives and that a man was killed in the line of duty.  And isn't that they way it always goes? Life is bittersweet, I've found. We weigh our happiness and sadness against one another on one arm and then our lives as world citizens and as inhabitants of our own small spheres on the other. Great tragedy strikes our country and yet, on the same day, a family, somewhere in the South, receives the amazing news that the last scan is clean and that the cancer is completely gone. Bittersweet.   When I was young, the world seemed ordered. This was, of course, the product of a carefully-kept routine devised by my parents and the adults in whose care I felt so safe. Breakfast before school. Recess. Afternoon snack. Playing outside. Dinner at 5:30. Bedtime at 8:00. The order of my life and the tiny, tiny world in which I lived made sense.  But I've grown up, as have we all, and my world has expanded ever wider to include places like Afghanistan and North Korea and Chechnya in its sphere of knowledge. It has expanded to include tragedy and pain and loss and calamity. It has expanded in good ways, too, mind you, but so often, I think, it is the good in our world that goes without our notice. We take it for granted because it is good or feels good and don't pay attention to it until the chaos enters again and reminds us that we are not infinite, that we are fragile.  This week, nothing really makes sense. I'm baffled by the events of the last five days, so ironically coupled with the actions of our own Congress. I'm baffled by the the fact that to work in a school like Sandy Hook Elementary, I am required to submit to and pass a background check, but that to buy an assault rifle, I am not. I am baffled by the fact that terrorism exists at all. I am baffled by human cruelty as we sling words around as if they do not hurt, hiding behind Twitter accounts or news feeds.  But more importantly, perhaps, I am baffled by human courage.  This, my dear friends, has been a week of immense courage. I've seen the footage of people running towards the flames, towards the explosions, towards the chaos to help the wounded and the dying.  I've seen the footage at least a dozen times now and it gives me goosebumps every viewing. And a lump rises in my throat. And I shake my head and wonder if I could be that brave.  And even now, as I type this, thousands of police officers and members of our armed forces are putting their lives on the line in a manhunt, as they search for the other suspect who is a 19 year old boy.  Let's think about that for a minute.  The fugitive for whom we search so furtively is a 19 year old boy. I am not defending this young man. I am not defending his actions. I am not defending his cause, if he had one to begin with.  I am merely remembering myself at 19. And I am trying to be compassionate. I would rather choose compassion over a knee-jerking reaction of hate. Because as Mahtma Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." 

Our civilian friends in Boston are brave. Our marathon runners are brave. Our firefighters are brave. Our people, the families of all those who have perished this week, be it in Boston, or Texas, or in a hospital bed somewhere in America, they are brave. And people, all over the world, who wake up every day with chaos all around them and face life without averting their eyes - they are brave.  I am not a timid person, but nor do I consider myself to be an especially courageous one either. But I think compassion is also brave. No, it is not looking danger in the eye. And no, it is not running into a burning building or a swarm of confusion following an explosion. But it is quietly brave and the world needs quietly brave people, too.  In spite of its flaws, and one must admit that there are many, one of the things that has always impressed me the most about our country and its citizens is the unflagging hope and resilience of the American people. I'm not saying it's unique to us and I'm not going to step up on a large soapbox and preach about American ideals and Manifest Destiny or whatnot. But I will say this - we will rebuild. If for no other reason than that is the only option we allow ourselves.  And, while I speak for myself, I think this is true for so many of us - we will continue to hope for better. Because we believe that the vast majority of people are better. I, for one, have to believe that or everything else just seems too hard. 

Be safe. Be well. 

[thenestedblog]

Oh, Strawberry-Banana-Beet Smoothie. You are too good to me.

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Follow my blog. Win awesome things. www.thenestedblog.com

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I love house porn. Don't you? (P.S. That is what we call a "closetgasm." Enjoy. http://www.thenestedblog.com/2013/04/this-is-not-thing-for-which-you-were.html